New Renault Twingo: The Return Of Small Cheap Cars!
Small cars are dying out because nobody wants them. That is what the rest of the car industry would have you believe, but Renault says otherwise. They say small cars are dying out because no one’s brave enough to make them anymore because they’re so hard to make money off. So puffed up by the success of the four and the five, Renault have rolled up their sleeves and said, “Sod it then. We’ll do it ourselves.” Welcome to the new Renault Twingo and welcome to the Everything Electric Show. Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean tech are funded by our fun-packed Test Drivetastic events in Farra, London, the Southwest, the North, Melbourne, and Sydney, and next up, Everythingele Electric Melbourne. And new for UK viewers, you can now buy a battery EV and much more at everythingleelectric.store. Now, back to the episode. Oh, this is an exciting day. We weren’t sure it was happening. It is. We weren’t sure it was coming to the UK. It is. Say hello to the new Renault Twingo. This is Renault’s sub20,000 EV proposition. here long before VW’s ID1 has materialized and joining a segment that currently consists of the Dacer spring which is also a Renault uh the leap motor T03 Fiat 500 and that’s about it. Make no mistake this is a dying segment. The A segment super compact city cars make up about 5% of new car sales in Europe these days. That is a fraction of what it once was. It’s a segment that’s been replaced almost entirely by those pesky compact crossovers, which just to remind you are more expensive, heavier, less efficient, worse to drive, uglier, and worse. Okay, those last two are subjective, but the rest are true. But Renault says, and we have always said that the diminishing a segment is not due to a lack of demand, but a lack of supply. It’s getting harder and harder to make small cars and make money off of them because of increasingly strict regulations. And that combined with the fact that all car brands are currently navigating this very expensive EV transition has led to most of them just going too hard. We’re not doing it. But Renault reckons they’ve cracked it. They reckon they’ve figured out a way to make small EVs sufficiently affordably and quickly to make it make sense financially while still producing a product that is special enough to deservedly sit alongside the fantastic Renault 5 in their EV lineup. And from a glance, I’d say they’ve done pretty well. It’s very reminiscent of the original Twingo which launched in 1993. That’s the iconic one. Later twingo are lesser twingo. So, we’ve got those big eyes, although really interesting the way they’re done with this body section through the middle of the headlamp. Really, really cool. This is the daytime running light. This is the indicator. And then the main beams are just in this little sliver here. Really nice piece of lighting. Down here, very important feature. These are Parisian parking aids. They just well they just help you bump into other cars without scratching your paintwork. Very important in France. Lovely color as well, isn’t it? At launch we get red, green, yellow, and black. Really lovely bright vibrant colors which really fit the cheerful personality of this car. Look, it’s smiling. It’s literally smiling. It winks when you unlock it. It’s a happy piece of design. Less sure about this. Quite a lot of plastic on the bonnet here. And we’ve got the kind of motif that represents the little vents of the original Twingo. Would have been nice if they were like a charge indicator like they are on the Renault 5, but I suppose we have to remember this car is built to a price. It’s actually the washer fluid thingy, by the way. You put a key in there, open that up, and it goes. You can’t open the bonnet. There’s no frunk, but there is a generous boot, which we’ll get to. Few things of note. First of all, size. 3.79 m properly compact car. That’s 13 cm shorter than a Rena 5. 3 cm shorter than a Shindai Insta. Tiny bit bigger than a Daca spring. Cars don’t get much smaller than this these days. Four doors. That’s quite surprising. Four-door Renault Twingo. We’ll talk about space in the rear a little bit later. Prepare to be impressed. This is quite surprising as well. This Twingo sits on 18s. 18 in on a Twingo. The mind boggles. 16-in wheels as standard. They’re actually steelies with wheel covers. Those are the ones I’d have, but you can have optional wheels on both trims. Yeah, they’re okay. No sills as well. That’s quite nice. No sills or trim along the edges of the window, which really just keeps it clean and tidy. Although you might get quite a bit of muck down there. We’ll see about that. And then we get to the back, which might be its best angle. Look at that tail light. That belongs in a modern art exhibition. It’s absolutely beautiful. New twingo type face across the back. That’s quite good fun. Parisian parking aids. very important. And there are subtle arrow features everywhere. So, this little rear spoiler with the clean brake, good for efficiency. These little spikes on top of the tail light, not decorative arrow features, efficiency. We’ll get on to the specs in a minute, but let’s just have a quick look at the boot because it’s rather good. Okay, so we do have quite a big lip. Fair enough. But check this out. Party piece. Individual sliding seats. And if we slide them all the way forward, we squish our rear occupants, but we get up to 360 L of boot space. Or we can fold these flat and get up to 1,000 L. And got another 50 L under here with these uh removable um individual covers. So you can sort of if you’ve got a lot of shopping on that half of the boot, you can just flip this one up to get at your charge cables. Also worth noting in here, we’ve got these two little clip fixing points, one on either side. There’s more of these inside the car, and we saw these on the Dacer spring. Basically, there’s a whole range of clip-on accessories that you can install. So, in the boot, we could have a parcel shelf. We could have little individual lights. There’s a shopping bag that you can clip onto here. More for the interior. I’ll show you in a second. Right, let’s talk about the underneath bits, the techy bit. So, this car sits on the AMPR small platform, exact same platform as the Renault 5. The battery pack is 27 1/2 kwatt hours LFP. First time that Renault has gone with LFP, that’s obviously less power dense than nickel manganese cobalt, but it’s more affordable. Uh, and they reckon that between using LFP and going with a cellto pack battery design, they’ve uh brought the cost of the battery down by 20%. From that 27 12 kWh battery, we get 163 mi of range, which I’ve run the numbers is about 6 m to the kilowatt hour. That is massive efficiency. And I’m inclined to believe them because the quoted range on the Renault 5 is bang on. It’s exactly as efficient as they claim it to be. How on earth has it done that? Well, it’s bloody light. It’s only got a small battery. It weighs about 1.2 tons. Of course, you can do all the clever stuff you want with aerodynamics and rolling resistance, but the best way to make EVs really efficient is minimize weight. And just for context, a reminder that 10 odd years ago, Renault would sell you a Zoey with a 23 kWh battery, similar size. That car was good for maybe 85 miles of range in the real world, and cost £25,000. How far we’ve come. What else? Well, single motor setup, only one motor to choose from. It’s good for about 82 brake horsepower. Performance is going to be modest. You know that because they didn’t even give us the naugh to 60 time. They gave us the naugh to 50 km per hour time, which is 3.8 seconds. There you go. We do get vehicle to load as standard because of this fantastic platform. That’s really, really nice. Rapid charging is up to 50 kW. That means 10 to 80% in 30 minutes. That’s fine. I do understand why they don’t bother with really, really rapid charging on small battery EVs. They did the same thing with the Dac Spring. But I would have liked to have a 100. I think that if you give a small EV with a small battery really quick charging, it’s not limited to just being a city car cuz you can go on big trips knowing charging won’t take long. But I digress. As for price, well, as I sit here today, we don’t know exactly. We know it’s less than £20,000 in France. We know it’s going to be less than £20,000 in the UK. What I would say is that given the small battery Renault 5, the 40 kWh Reno5 is 22 grand, it’s going to want to be comfortably less than 20,000. I would say given much smaller battery, much smaller car. Okay. Interior of the new Renault Twingo. And here’s what I’ll say. Fun has been had. I said the same thing when I reviewed the Renault 5. effort has been made to add little details just to cheer it up, make it fun. And there’s not enough of that in modern car design. It’s so refreshing. It’s especially important with really entry-level cars where you can’t furnish them with really high-end technology and premium materials. You’ve got to think outside the box. You got to do fun little things to cheer them up inside. And they’ve got plenty of that in here. So for the Twingo files, you’ll be delighted to see bodycoled motifs inside the cabin. This is actually the inside of the door. That’s metal. It’s just exposed through the trim. Really cool. We’ve got a lovely body colored piece on the dash here. That’s plastic. Fair enough. We’ve got floor mats with the Twingo type face and letters kind of sprawled all over them. And the same thing sort of pressed into the headliner. So cool. This is my favorite nod to the old Twingo. big blobby translucent hazard button just like the one that used to sit on the dash in the old car. Love that. And this is quite cool as well. We’ve got this modular storage section down here which you can sort of make whatever you want it to be with various 3D printed aftermarket accessories. So, for example, here’s another fixing point. This one is currently being used for a sort of charge cable tidy. That’s quite nice. And then down here, well, you can sort of do whatever you want. These are prototypy pieces. So, I’m going to be a bit careful with them. But right now, we’ve got this sort of litted storage box, but if you don’t want this, you could have an extra cup holder. Just clip that in. Don’t break the prototype pieces, Jack. Don’t do it. They told me not to touch these. Like that. This is going to be better with editing, I’m sure. steering wheel bit bland. Looks like it’s just off the Cleo. Probably is not quite as fun as the rest of the car. Would have been nice to have its own funky little design. And then my biggest reservation with this car anywhere is the visibility. It’s a very very high dash piece and quite a letter boxy view out. Thankfully, it’s a teeny weeny car, so there’s not much bonnet beyond what I can see, but I can’t see it at all. All in all though, I really like it. I think it’s fun, playful. Oh, this is good as well. My favorite button has been retained from the Renault 5, which is the one that turns all the beeping off. Back seats. Okay, back seat test of the teeny weeny a segment Renault Twingo. 6’6, keep in mind. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, that’s not bad. This seat is pretty much exactly where I’d have it. I’ve gamed it slightly. It’s where I would have it if I had someone sat behind me in a very small car. I’d be very happy sat there driving. This is really not bad. Floor, not too high at all. Headroom really Okay, it’s a little bit cramp, but it’s not terrible for a car this size. If I can fit in it, I’m happy. I think this is roomier than the Renault 5, actually in the back. I really do. Not many creature comforts, admittedly. I don’t have any vents. I can’t properly open my window. It’s just ah one of those things that pinch you. Haven’t seen one of those for a while as evidenced by the fact that I’ve forgotten how to operate it properly. But again, it’s a sub20,000 lb car. You’re not going to get all the creature comfort. And there are some cool things back here like the fact that these seats slide. Look, so you can go all the way forward and just give yourself the big old boot if that’s what you need. A couple of things I forgot to mention in the front. really like the simple dash layout with the big hazard button and then just the three big twisty physical controls for the HVAC. Couple of USBC ports down there. There’s no wireless charger. Uh so you have to plug in. I don’t mind. I don’t really like wireless chargers. They make my phone hot and the system is all Google software which is just wonderful news because that means that it works. I really like the Google setup. It’s what my polestar runs. It’s what all the other Renault cars operate with. It works really, really well. They’ve got all the chat GPT functionality in there as well, so you can just ask the car to open your windows if you can’t be asked to reach for the switch. Rejoice. Oh, other things I forgot to mention. Sorry, we’re in a rush today. One pedal driving. This has it. You’ve got adjustable regen paddles. You only get full one pedal on the higher trim level, which is weird and annoying, but never mind. Also, you get lots of driving aids as standard. And the top trim car can do self-p parking as well. So, you just do the throttle, it does the steering. wouldn’t expect that on a car at this price point. But how have they achieved that price point? Well, this is something they’ve been very keen to tell us about in today’s presentations. How they’ve gone about building this car affordably and how they’ve done it so quickly. Because this is the first car of what they’re calling the Leap 100 project, whereby they build a car, design it, engineer it, produce it, everything from start to finish inside 100 weeks. 100 weeks. What is it? A newborn baby? just say two years. Oh, my my little twingo, she’s she’s 100 weeks old. Anyway, for context, Renault would previously spend three and a half to four years creating a new car from start to finish. They’ve cut that down to 2 years. They’ve also done lots of stuff. Allah Kia PV5 in order to just simplify the production. Minimal different trim levels. Only two versions of this car to choose from. They all get the same battery, the same motor, just as much standardization as possible. You choose your trim level, you choose your wheels, you choose your paint. That’s it. All of this helps achieve that low price point. And of course, keeps things nice and green as well. Renault says this car has a 60% smaller carbon footprint than the old petrol-powered Twingo that it succeeds. New Twingo. What do we think then? Leave a comment. Tell us what you think about the design, about your first impressions. I am excited. I’m so excited to be able to stand here and look down the camera and say, “Here’s a new electric car that costs less than 20 grand that you can buy.” That’s already exciting. But when you couple that with the fact that it’s a new sub20,000 EV from the people behind the Renault 5, the best small EV that we’ve seen to date, it’s a very exciting recipe. I’m very, very encouraged by what I’ve seen here today. There’s a few little things I’m not sure about, but I’ll reserve judgment till I get it out onto the road. And can we just finish by acknowledging something? The narrative for years was that, “Oh, China’s coming. China’s coming. They’re going to swallow the European car industry whole.” Well, this is Europe responding. That is what this represents. An emphatic response by European legacy car brand to adapt to modern times and do what they have to do to survive. So much innovation, but also just clever industrialization has gone on behind the scenes in order to realize this car. And it is the latest feather in Renault’s cap, which is looking very feathery at this point. So, there we go. The new Twingo. A segment. We’re back, baby. Do make sure to leave a comment down below. Let us know what you think. Do make sure to like and subscribe. And if you have been, thanks for watching.
Jack takes a first look at Renault’s smallest and most affordable electric car yet: the new Twingo. With a sub-£20,000 price tag, is this the entry level EV that will bring electric to the masses?
0:00 – Say Bonjour To The New Renault Twingo!
0:50 – Ahead Of The Competition
1:26 – Why Is The A-Segment Dying Out?
2:35 – A Familiar Face
2:42 – Design Walkaround
5:04 – Boot Space
6:08 – Stats! Battery, Range & Price
8:40 – Interior
11:20 – Rear Seats
12:28 – More Interior Features!
13:29 – How Have They Achieved That Price Point?
14:44 Concluding Thoughts
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